On Side
by calledbyname
Summary: The thing about secret romances and this was the annoying one was that they were so full of unromantic details, tucked in between all the mundane elements of ordinary life.


A/N: Set at the end of 4x01, "Personal Effects".

* * *

The thing about secret romances (and this was the annoying one) was that they were so full of unromantic details, tucked in between all the mundane elements of ordinary life.

They had to take care of the little things before they could go check in with Ed and Sophie. Team Three was wrapping downstairs up and Boss headed right back to the barn—possibly to nail Dr. Toth to the wall with darts, by the look on his face. After Sam and Jules handed Potter over to a couple of unis in the building lobby (which was now swarmed with people from Guns and Gangs) all they had left to do was go back up and take their equipment out.

The balcony was littered with little chunks of glass that crunched underfoot; once he was free, up the carpeted stairs, Sam stopped to scuff his boots to clear their treads. "Spike," Jules asked, ten feet from him and in his headset, "did you bag Potter's gun?"

"Yeah," Spike said from wherever he's gone. "Let's meet outside," he added. "The hospital is four blocks from here, we can just walk over and see Ed."

"Just got to finish the ropes," Sam said; they were still dangling from where he and Jules unclipped them, and he had to go up to undo the moorings from the top floor.

"I'll help you," Jules said quickly, having made sure there was nothing on this level she wanted, and bounded up to join him.

On one level, there was absolutely nothing suspicious about that—Jules always volunteered to pack up ropes, since it drove her nuts when someone did it badly. On another, Sam thought, feeling a little off-kilter… it wasn't just wistful thinking that made him suspect she wanted a moment alone just as badly as he did.

And she did, when they reached the next landing; when they were out of sight of the mezzanine, she took his hand. Squeezed it, lightly. A quick gesture, offhand, reassuring and unusual, because Jules didn't touch him without reason. They touched at work all the time: boosting each other up over an obstacle and huddling face to back away from a blast, hand on vest and shoulder and elbow for tactical proximity, and even the ghostlike not-touch of spotting weights. But Jules shied away from extraneous touch, excessive intimacy. She didn't just hold his hand.

Except now, when they were climbing together, paces matched, and her hand took his (her gaze falling on him like a light, bright and burning, something he'd been trying not to feel for a long time now) and she smiled, tight and tremulous. _I know what it means,_ that smile told him, _and I meant it._

But redirected him with a flick of her eyes back to work when they got to the top, all of her compressed back into worry and the job. She shuttered so easily.

Even though, he reflected as he unhooked the climbing apparatus, even shuttered Constable Callaghan was open to him in her own way. She took the rope he handed her without even looking, flicked her fingers at the carrying case with a murmur of, "Hey, could you—" that was so much more like the memory of words she'd said a thousand times the autotranscripter probably wouldn't have picked it up. He opened it up for her and stood steady as she loaded the coils of rope in.

When she was done her hand moved, for an instant, to wrap around his wrist again and squeeze, and she gave him another tight smile; then they were back to work again.

Which was infuriating.

Which probably meant he and Jules were back to dating again.

Jules kind of expected him to go third degree on her the moment they were in the car and on their way back to headquarters, microphones switched off. It took her a moment to hear anything over the sound of her own breathing, which had picked up just a notch when the doors slammed shut. Instead Sam just slumped back in the passenger seat with a sigh. A tired kind of sigh, an end-of-day sigh, not an irritated one. She was pretty sure.

But she didn't turn the radio on, even braced as she was against the questioning that didn't come. When she had them on the freeway (which was quiet, almost clear, reminding her of the long highways of home) she risked looking sideways at him for more than a glance.

Sam was awake, looking out the window, that same lost-in-thought expression he got any time there was nothing to do except drive. Usually she liked that they were both kind of quiet in the car—when Rollie was on the team she'd hated drives with him, because Rollie never shut up—about work, politics, the Bluejays—and sometimes she just liked to sit back and recoup after shift. But it was like she and Sam had forgotten how to talk, or fallen out of the habit, or trained themselves to forget just how much they had to talk about.

And normally, at least before, getting Sam to talk about their relationship was not a problem. Getting Sam to _stop_ talking about it, on the other hand…

That was unfair, she admitted to herself. She should get Sam to stop talking about it in an instant—but he kept talking with his eyes, and that had been the hardest thing after the breakup. The hardest thing when they weren't talking about it and officially there was nothing to talk about, watching them say, _you're shutting yourself out and I want to be there for you._

The question she'd been asking herself for more than a while now was, how did you go back from that? It wasn't like she'd ruined Sam's life, but he'd kept trying to trust her, personally; he had her on speed dial and gave her keys to his building, slept with her and wanted to hold her hand, and she…

She broke up with him and ended that and had almost felt angry with him for letting her. She'd resented him for moving on and silently dared him to resent it when she did. She kept expecting it to blow up, for him to hate her, for them to stop working together, because she'd rejected him and betrayed his trust and shouldn't he of all people not be okay with that?

What she had not expected was for him to be kind to her.

She hadn't expected him to turn over the stuff she'd forgotten at his place casually one day at work, just by dropping by the locker room when it was empty. Or that he wouldn't take offence and pick fights with her, when she offered them. That he'd be professional in their job in a way that meant not just doing every duty he was asked to, but still treating her like a teammate the way all the rest of them did.

Which kind of begged the question, when she got around to asking it at the end of a long year of questions. The question, after she'd looked down the barrel of Steve's eyes had to answer if she wanted to be with him (which was no, not really, and she knew _that_ with an instant clarity that made her cold all over). When she'd done the walks and the dinners and the missed period that scared the hell out of her and knew Steve wasn't who she ought to be doing this with, and knew who _was_.

The question was, had she waited too long? And was he still willing to trust her?

Which he'd answered this afternoon before it even left her mouth, and she wanted to hear it again but she couldn't fit language to the question.

So she cleared her throat instead and said, "So, Natalie's staying with you?"

"Yeah," Sam said after a moment. There was a resigned sigh in his voice. "She had a breakup. I _think_ it was a breakup. She's on the hide-a-bed in the den right now until things get sorted out."

"Wasn't she in Montreal?"

"Yep." He sighed again. "They broke up, and she threw her stuff in her car and hit the road, six hours flat-out, and got to my place around twelve thirty last night. I… think she was originally thinking she'd stop at the border and stay with Mom and Dad, but once she got into Ontario she kept driving. I don't blame her," he added after a pause.

"Yeah." Her own parents were nothing but supportive, but Jules hadn't gone to them for help after a breakup since she was sixteen. It had to be even worse with parents who really _did_ still see their daughter as a child. "I guess this is… kind of your week for unexpected visitors."

"Twice is not a trend," he said, grinning suddenly—she could hear it in his voice before she looked over and it caught her, warming her stomach like a stiff drink. "You're kind of special."

One, she couldn't help the smile; it came at her like an unruly breeze, tugging her face out of position, unfurling its corners like a flag caught by the wind. Two—a blush, an honest blush, started creeping up her neck. Both embarrassed her, but she thought, _it's kind of the point here_ even though not hiding it made her feel uncomfortable and exposed. "Good to hear," she said softly.

He touched her upper arm supportively as they turned into SRU Headquarters' parking lot, and dropped his hand again when she pulled into a spot.

"Listen," she said, impulsively, reaching out past her usual caution. "After we clock out. Let's just…"

Words failed her, stalled at the bottom of the slope of what she wanted to express. _Let's just act as though we both know I love you. Let's do something. Just forgive me and act like I actually deserve to get what I want._

"Jules," Sam said slowly. "Let me make this pretty easy on you. When we head out of here, I am taking you back to bed. Or else I am giving up on this team and going back to Afghanistan."

Relief flooded through her, hot with laughter and wanting, nothing cold in her at all. "You are not going back to Afghanistan," she said, giddily. "Sam—I love you. And I was not screwing with you."

"You just wanted us to maybe have _careers_ tomorrow," he agreed, grumpily. Then, after a furtive look around the quiet parking lot, he ducked down and kissed her.

When they were done, she pushed at his collarbone. "Go get changed," she said with a grin.

"Already done," he promised, scrambling out.

It wasn't until Dharun from Team Three asked him in the gun locker that Sam realized he didn't know the name of Ed's new daughter.

"—Heard it was going to be Lois. Figure he had to be full of it, right?"

Sam snorted, putting his clip away. "I don't think he's got that much credit with his wife, and she's not a Superman fan."

"And he's in surgery, right? She could get the name down before he gets out."

"Isabelle," Spike announced, coming in behind them. Sam, done racking his weapon, stepped back to let Spike through. "Six pounds, three ounces. Some of us pay _attention._"

"Yeah?" Sam said. He wasn't going to give Spike a hard time over it, but Spike got prickly anyway, sometimes. "They decide on Isabelle ahead of time?"

"Isabelle or Peter," Spike agreed.

"Should've gone with Lois," Dharun muttered.

"'Lois Lane' is a hefty legacy to put on a kid," Spike said, which made Sam laugh.

"And they say _we_ take a long time to get dressed," a voice said from the doorway. Donna, already in civvies; Jules beside her, in jeans and a shirt, and not (_dammit,_ a small part of his mind said) the sundress she'd worn earlier. "You guys are all still in uniform. Jules is ditching on me. I was gonna ask if any of you wanted to grab a bite at the 24-hour down the road."

"Sold," Spike said readily. "Dharun?"

"Nah, thanks," Dharun said. "Another time."

Sam looked at Jules for a minute, at the perfect neutrality of her face, thinking hard. She still wanted a career; she still wanted them to keep this away from work. So instead he said, "Tempting, but my sister came in last night from Montreal. I should probably spend some time with her."

"You want a ride?" Jules said. "You can put your bike in the back of my car."

"Yeah, if you don't mind waiting. I'll just get changed."

"Give me your bike key and I'll move it over."

"Thanks," he said, dug his keys out of his pocket, and tossed them over to her. She made a two-handed catch beside her head, then made her goodbyes to everyone else and headed out.

Which pretty much gave him an excuse to change as fast as humanly possible. For that, he was thankful. Everything else was window-dressing.

Everything else was just… details.

Finding parking on the street of Sam's building, since the guest parking was full, and finding out whether the suite was occupied or not; if Nat had been in, they would have made introductions all round and Sam would have grabbed an overnight bag.

Morning routines that would inevitably come, like showers and coffee and breakfast, things they always knew; things that came from shared five-ams that were more than just theirs, from team coffee runs and graveyard shifts as well as the time before.

Things they'd managed to remember all the way through trying to forget, like sensitive spots and shapeless words, the hand motion that meant _move over_ and the shape, re-created to its smallest moment, they made together when they fell asleep, entangled, the last time they'd made love.

Questions like _what is this_ and _what are we_ and _when will we_ and _do you_, unspoken after all, _Isabelle—did you ever want—?_

Things that would work themselves out in the morning, or not; would be acknowledged or ignored, saved with a trip to the corner store or etched into memory to deeply to dislodge.

Everything else, but this:

Fighting sleep, much later at night, surprised-and-terrified at the fierceness winding through her, the certainty, that after all of it she was _right_ to come back to him and back to this, however it ended, she brushed a hand over his and whispered, "Sam."

He, who had always waited, recognized even though the thickening veil of sleep the magic of names (of that one, particular, _right_ name) knew what to say. His words—"Hey, Jules—" ghosted sleepily over the back of her neck.

"What I wanted," she said softly, which probably didn't make sense. _This is what I wanted. If you asked me what I wanted—this is it._ "Glad I'm here."


End file.
